Bretta Rosé | Firestone Walker Brewing Co.

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Notes / Commercial Description:
Thirty miles north of Barrelworks lies the fertile Santa Maria Valley. Its warm days and cool marine layer-fed evenings allow for a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables to be grown in its rich soil. One of Santa Maria’s crown jewels is locally grown raspberries. We jumped at the opportunity to ferment fresh local raspberries with one of our Barrelworks creations. Behold Bretta Rosé! A low-alcohol Berliner Weisse style ale, acidified and matured in French oak puncheons for 6 months, is the foundation for this gem. Add 1000 lbs. of fresh raspberries, allow a secondary wild fermentation for 4 more months and voila (!), we have a crisp effervescent concoction, bursting with raspberry perfume and flavor, a rosé color, bracing acidity, and a clean and refreshing finish.

Nose is exploding with raspberries and tart Brett funk, big raspberry out front, with nice Brett funk and lots of nice lacto funk. Flash of strawberry, over ripe seedy soaked into the earthy strawberry, very bright fruit and sour funk, lots of seed and stem tannins, with a faint touch of oaky barrel. Light acetic acid with all the great funk.

375ml bottle $12.99 batch three from February of 2016. Bright pink color, almost no head at all, looks kind of still. Aroma is this real nice tart raspberry and brett aroma. Flavor is delicious, barely sour, very well defined raspberry flavor, like munching on one, they must have used a decent amount or they just know how to capture the essence. I have not paid enough attention to Firestone's barrel aged wild ales but they are top notch.

This one pours a nice dark pinkish, almost red, with a small head, and a bit of lacing.

This one smells to raspberry high heaven, delicious, and super aromatics in raspberry, and lemon, with just a hint of funk.

This is such a nice expression of funky, juicy raspberry. It's fairly tart, but not overwhelmingly so. There's lot of juicy raspberry, you almost feel like you have to pick the seeds out of your mouth. It's not all just raspberry, though, there is some nice lemony funk, too. It's super refreshing.

This is lighter bodied, with a juicy and acidic mouthfeel, and a good level of carbonation.

top notch stuff right here, but these guys almost never miss, especially with the wild stuff. the color is awesome, half way between pink and red, electric and bright, with a bubbly head three inches tall from the tap, but only a little pink. it smells really acidic, and tastes far more sour than expected for what i though was supposed to be a brett only beer until i just read the description. the fact that is a berliner as a base makes a lot of sense, obviously its a wheat base, but the acidity is now explained! good. the fruit is radiant in the nose, both sweet and tart, but clearly at the peak of ripeness. up there with atrial in terms of use of raspberry in beer. its genuine in the taste too, right off the pricker bush. right as the fruit starts to fade out in the taste with that mouthwatery i need another thing, the brett kicks in, pushing up through the lactic acidity just enough to add some woody musty funk to the very last essence of this before its gone. i like its late and subtle appearance, and i like how well it dries out the fruit sweetness but preserves the flavor so well. really tremendously high quality beer, i have been so impressed with this series, but this one stands above the rest for me. worth seeking out, even at a considerable cost.